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Category: Networking

When you get a new HP Procurve Switch, you want to configure it so that the time is correct. This helps to make your logs, monitoring, etc… all be more useful and time relevant. Additionally, in a prior article (Setup…

I recently had an opportunity to test out some HP 2920 switches for the office. We chose to use both HP 2920-48G and HP 2920-48G-PoE+ switches. We were looking for switches with 10G capability (Add the fiber sfp+ module to…

I recently reconfigured one of my Dell PowerConnect 3548P switches to prepare it for another task. To perform this task, I connected to the serial interface, logged into the CLI console with my terminal emulator and reset the device, and…

ISP Redundancy with SonicWall If you have used the internet then you know that there will be disruptions and that many of those disruptions are caused by your ISP. The best part is that you can minimize ISP caused internet…

In a recent article here on UptimeMadeEasy about setting up NTP, I mentioned and showed an example on using tcpdump to watch the ntp traffic in and out of your server. I realized that the very short example was just…

In the old days, when you wanted to build a Linux DNS server, you would immediately go to Bind. More recently, however, other Open Source options have developed that store their records in SQL databases. Additionally, WebGUIs have been created…

SSH Tunneling – Get Through Your Firewall to Other Ports Do you have a server on the other side of a firewall that you can ssh to, but to which you cannot reach on other ports. Let’s imagine, for example,…

NMAP the Network Exploration Tool and Security / Port Scanner The “Network Mapper” or Nmap (the actual command) is an extremely useful tool for determining what is on your network, what ports UDP or TCP are open, what operating systems…

Cacti is an excellent tool to use to monitor your company’s bandwidth usage. It is also very simple to add your routers into your cacti configuration. (Note: If you need instructions on installing cacti, see Install Cacti on CentOS 6). …

Most IT Network Administrators are tasked with putting a content filter into place to resolve a myriad of HR issues. Several years ago, I selected a SonicWall NSA to do this for my organization because it did a good job…

What is NTP? NTP (Network Time Protocol) is the time protocol that most servers in the world use to keep in sync. Most companies will have a local NTP server that they keep in sync with an external timing source…

Setup a Remote GUI on Linux Using VNC Server There are some times when having a remote GUI console can be very helpful. You may want to use the GUI interface for configuring the machine or to use applications. I…

Control Ssh Login by Time Sometimes, we want to control the time-frame that a user can login to a machine with ssh. In these cases, we need to configure Sshd to Allow Login by Time Schedule. Create User In our…

Network Challenge – Connect Two Buildings I have had to extend my network into a second building two times in the last several years. The first time I got lucky. Although there was no fiber to the building –to either…

There are some things in life that don’t make any difference to you when everything is good. But suddenly make you happier when there is a problem. For me, DynECT Managed DNS traffic management is one of these. It doesn’t…

SonicOS Version There are several great tutorials out there on how to setup a SonicWall SSLVPN. Each one is somewhat different as the SonicOS changes and the steps and location of items changes from release to release. So, while they…

When you are running a very small business, you often don’t have the time to mess with having a centralized windows or mac directory server handle your DHCP for you. In these cases, if you happen to have a Cisco…

ISP Outage Anybody with any IT experience will tell you that at some point, you will have ISP issues. Depending on the issue you could be down anywhere from just minutes to hours. I once had an issue with a…

DIY Wireless The simplest multi-access point wireless installation that I have ever installed was to install Ruckus Wireless gear. I stumbled across Ruckus by reading comments in spiceworks forums , and from those who used it for their own network. …

Featured Posts

I have been working with Nginx and Varnish for a good little bit. They are both obviously great proxy servers. The question that I have asked myself and others over this time is which should I actually use? Which performs…

With nearly every resource a business uses these days being served through a browser, every application is now a URL. If you find yourself in IT, some portion of your job may be just managing the growing list of URL…

Recently, I have been adding varnish to some of my websites to improve their performance. But in the end, how do I know if varnish is helping or not, or if it is helping, can varnish help more? Obviously you…

A few articles ago, I wrote about using the “apachebench” or “ab” utility to benchmark your website (see: apachebench). Ab is a great tool, but since then, I have found and fallen in love with a new tool for benchmarking…

I mentioned in another article (Speed Up Your Webpage with Varnish) some of the benefits of Varnish Cache. It provides excellent caching and proxying which can provide a nice performance boost for your website. Another benefit in varnish cache is…